TWIKE 560 Adventures

We stayed up until way after mid-night. I blame the very tasty white wine. 🙂 Our only drive-free day on this year’s TWIKE adventure is filled with feel-good activities and interesting stuff for my daughter. Exiting the building my uncle lives in, I chuckled at yet again a very Austrian name and the implications it could have if applied to an international – specifically, an English-speaking – environment…   This name reminds me of the last names of two Swiss people I’ve met: Mr. Killer and… Mrs. Boner 😀 Today, even TW560 gets some well-deserved rest!   First thing planned […]

Since yesterday’s evening lasted well into the early hours of today, we get up later than usual and have a slow breakfast with my family in Vienna. Eventually, we had to get back on the road to Linz. Fortunately, apart from being overcast, today’s weather was fine. We disconnect the TWIKE and start today’s 180km drive towards Linz.   The leftovers of yesterday’s freak weather event were still very visible today…   Winds were still high – shaking the snow off the trees and giving us a real winter wonderland feeling…in late April!   About 50km outside of Vienna we […]

Even with us both visualizing a sunny day today, we are greeted by heavy rain with interspersed snow flakes. YUK! After breakfast we leave Budapest on the motorway – we don’t like driving along smaller roads when it rains. Should the rain stop later on, we still can leave the motorway and go back to our original route.   My Austrian family is waiting for me in Vienna and expects us sometime after 5pm – with all this time at our disposal, we had planned to visit Bratislava – Slovakia’s very pretty capital city. (TW560 has already been to Bratislava […]

Sun streaming into our room wakes us this morning and we enjoy a beautiful view of Balaton lake. Our breakfast remains in true style of this hotel’s left-over soviet groove: Both my daughter and I don’t feel like eating anything from the warm buffet – both the moltofil-like scrambled eggs and the barely fried bacon seem to be comfortable in their puddle of fat – I’ll spare you the description of the other things on offer. The whole breakfast process reminded me of my last experience with post-soviet breakfasting. I had some (exceptionally tasty) cold-cuts and paté with some crispy […]

Welcome back to our adventure! Today we’re going to drive rather far to reach Balaton lake. Whilst doing so, we will cross most of Slovenia and cross in and out of Croatia before entering Hungary and reaching our destination. After a night of heavy rain and high winds – which we got to feel directly with the rain beating against the windows of our hotel room. Being kept awake because of this was only a minor inconvenience, since rain falling though the night is not rain falling the next day. As we emerge from the cozy warmth of the parking […]

We’re greeted by the new day with many little rays of sun filtering in through the Italian-style rolling blinds. A fully charged TWIKE awaits us outside. With a deep blue sky, our Venetian villa looks even more grand than it did yesterday.   We drive to the ferry port and are on the ferry within 10 minutes – happy to have not had to wait too long. It is a pity that we are unable to get on the smaller ferry to Edolo. It would have shaved off an hour of our trip today.   As always we’re immediately surrounded […]

Hi there, we’re back posting. The last few days were a real test for us… internet-wise 🙂 In Switzerland we’ve gotten so used to CA’d-4G with (mobile) download speeds routinely exceeding 200Mbit and uploads around 40Mbit and FTTH slowly being the norm… until you leave the country, that is. The first three days in Italy really tested my patience with upload speeds in the low kbit region or just plain non-connectivity due to too many devices overloading consumer-grade WiFi equipment and grossly under-dimensioned internet links. Imagine waiting all night to upload 26 seconds of video! (Now in Slovenia, our Hotel […]

After sleeping fitfully with the window wide open at -1C and us breathing lots of very fresh air, we are greeted with a magnificent view from our hotel balcony:   Some healthy breakfast options later, we leave our hotel and check our overnight charging station.   It’s this cozy EV feeling that when you get to your car it is fully charged that makes you like starting your trip 🙂   With us pulling around 13kWh throughout the night, we’re at a charge rate that requires a second thought regarding the plug-type to choose, especially if we’re working with consumer-grade […]

Welcome to the first entry of this year’s TWIKE adventure, TDE2017! Both my daughter and I have been looking forward to this trip very much, since – at least for the first part – is a re-run of the trip we embarked on last year (TDIN2016) and had to abandon because of some problems. So here we are, this morning, bright and early, ready to leave!   Our trip today will take us to Livigno, Italy, via the Graubünden Alps and most of northeastern Switzerland. Since I’ve driven this direction already many, many times, it’s getting increasingly difficult to put […]